Bringing together the 2 top 10 AM100 dealer groups Jardine Motors and Pendragon into one organisation can’t have been easy for his or her recent owner.
However it has brought something crucial into focus – ensuring the workforce shares the brand new vision.
“The legacy is basically essential, nevertheless it’s previously. Today we’re Lithia,” Neil Williamson, operations president of Lithia UK tells Automotive Management.
US-based Lithia and Driveway acquired Jardine, which Williamson was already leading, after which Pendragon in quick succession. The result, including just a few other smaller bolt-on acquisitions, is a reshaped motor retail group that employs greater than 7,000 people and generates nearly £7 billlion in revenue.
“When you consider where we’ve come from, we’re still quite a young business really,” he says.
“The job to do, really, was construct something recent. Obviously keep the heritage of those businesses, but construct something recent and different, a brand recent business.”
Constructing one business
With the assistance of the workforce, of its US owners, and of its leadership strategy, the corporate identified what it stands for: Big, broad, and one business.
Being one business is crucially essential, Williamson says, because Lithia UK wants everyone working to attain its goals. Office politics, the friction of head office versus the dealerships, or inter-division conflicts are all examples of “wasted energy, negative energy in truth” that he says the group has no time for. Much work has been invested into the team at every level to create a culture of ideas sharing, mutual respect, camaraderie and supporting one another to drive success.
Williamson summarises: “If you need to work here, it’s all about collaboration.”
He has long believed in a ‘store first mentality’, even in his days running Mercedes-Benz Retail Group, which was where I first met Williamson some 15 years ago. Even then, he admitted that he spent most of his time coaching and driving people to make sure customers got great service and the dealerships were run well.
Now, in Annesley at Lithia UK’s freshly refurbished headquarters, the results of a £3.6 million investment to modernise Loxley House right into a base for greater than 500 colleagues working across central functions from accounting and HR to marketing and training, he’s telling me: “The stores are the front face of the business. They sell the cars, the parts, the hours, the finance.
“The people on this constructing, myself included, are here to make their lives easier. That’s what it’s wish to work for Lithia. That didn’t occur on day one, however the time we’ve taken to get that to work has been super successful.”
That work also pays off when times get tough. The automobile markets at all times have their ups and downs, plus OEMs, employees and customers are affected by national and global politics and events, but the correct company culture brings resilience with it.
“If we are able to take care of the bumps professionally, then our team knows we are able to get through this… Should you’re team isn’t glued together in tough times they’ll disintegrate, right?”
Teams aren’t necessarily required to adapt to ‘a Lithia way of doing things’, nevertheless. Williamson says the corporate is pleased to live with difference. If the evidence shows it is healthier to do something a technique in a single division and one other way elsewhere, then innovation and empowerment will work in ways in which profit the shopper.
Lithia’s pondering big
Despite its already substantial scale, Lithia UK is concentrated on growth. Williamson said the primary job is delivering organic growth, ensuring its dealerships are performing well and capturing the sales opportunities around them. The group had a powerful performance in 2025 and the trajectory stays positive, he says.
After that comes growth by acquisition. Last yr it acquired AM100 group Hatfields, which boosted Lithia’s relationship with JLR, and it has since bought plenty of dealerships from Read Motor Group, making Lithia a serious partner for Hyundai.
Williamson says he is inspired by his bosses at Lithia & Driveway in Oregon, USA, to “think big” and so they have delegated a level of trust and authority to him and his leadership team that permits the UK business to thrive. It does befit a worldwide organisation whose values comprise improve always, take personal ownership, earn customers for all times, and rejoice.
Considering big has made Lithia & Driveway itself right into a $36 billion (£27bn) stock market-listed business owning dealerships and other automotive businesses across the USA, the UK and Canada.
Williamson says Lithia UK’s strategy with its OEM partners is “to be sufficiently big where we matter to them and so they matter to us”.
Asked whether Lithia UK will rise to top the AM100, overtaking its rival Sytner which can be US owned, Williamson replies: “If it happens, it happens, nevertheless it’s not a goal.” He insists there is no such thing as a number in mind for revenue or overall variety of dealerships. Acquisitions have to be appropriate, where the OEM supports it, where the dealerships will grow and where the group has infrastructure to support it.
“Our aim is to be a successful business with recurring, growing income. That organic growth is massively essential.”
Hatfields will stay
Its primary brands within the UK are Evans Halshaw and Stratstone however the group isn’t planning to rebrand the recently acquired Hatfields anytime soon. Hatfields is a brand long related to JLR customers, and even within the USA Lithia uses quite a few trading brands in its regions.
Beneath Williamson sit three managing directors: one for Evans Halshaw overseeing the mainstream brands, one for Stratstone Prestige overseeing the premium brands, and one for Stratstone Exotics overseeing the luxurious brands.
And a recent rebrand to Driveway for the old Pendragon Vehicle Management leasing division has coincided with its relocation from Derby into Lithia’s Annesley head office.
Like many other AM100 groups, Lithia UK has been welcoming a few of the recent entrant brands. BYD and Omoda Jaecoo were the primary recent brands taken on, and these are being joined by Leapmotor, Chery and Geely.
Williamson says: “I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the UK consumers’ adoption of those Chinese brands. They’re great cars, at a great price, with great tech. They solve your transport needs, right? They simply do.”
He’s in a position to insert the brands into locations which still have strong multi-brand used automobile sales and an aftersales parc for the previous brand, so it doesn’t feel the immediate pressure of a start-up site with zero local market.
On the UK recent and used automobile markets, Williamson is pragmatic – all Lithia UK’s dealerships must do one of the best they will to be within the upper quartile in recent automobile performance, irrespective of what the market conditions are. He concedes it is simpler to say than to attain, however the aspiration is commendable.
Used automobile sales are “inside our gift”, he says, adding that the Evans Halshaw division typically sells two or three used cars for each one recent. “We’re a little bit of a powerhouse,” he adds. “Whatever the market size and almost whatever the movements in pricing, if we’re light enough on our feet and intelligent enough within the marketplace we are able to at all times make that work.”
Likewise, in aftersales, the business has hundreds of cars with customers and quite a lot of workshops across the country, so he believes there may be at all times more opportunity for increasing service, repair and warranty work.
From taking a look at how colleagues within the USA manage aftersales, his service teams at the moment are adapting a more sales-orientated mindset, to make it simpler and easier for the shopper.
Responding to an aftersales call with ‘yes, we’ll get you booked in’ fairly than asking a raft of questions, is bringing advantages already by way of additional bookings, albeit it continues to be work in progress.
“It’s good for us, good for the shopper. That’s an example of how the US can encourage us, that pondering big thing.”
This Article First Appeared At www.am-online.com
